Centre closed down over non-payment of NHIS claims

The Management of the King’s Village Medical Centre at Bontanga in the Kumbungu district of the Northern Region has carried through its threat to close down the facility following the failure of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to pay claims due the centre.

As a result, patients who turn up for medical attention at the centre are being turned away because the hospital lacks the necessary resources to take care of them due to the lack of funds.

Only emergency The centre, which currently attends to only emergency and existing cases, is the only health facility in the area that caters for over 237 communities in the Kumbungu and Tolon districts.

Last week, the management of the NHIS in the Northern Region expressed concern over the development and blamed it on administrative oversight which they assured had since been corrected.

The Regional Manager, Alhaji Huudu Iddrisu, promised that claims for June and July would be cleared this week.

No funds received However, according to the administrator of the King’s centre, Nii Otu Ankrah, “we have not received any funds yet, neither has there been any correspondence to that effect.”

The administrator earlier explained that, “we are resorting to these measures because we have been pushed to the wall as we have exhausted all our finances.”

He indicated that, “our major suppliers of drugs have refused to deliver because of the huge amounts we owe them. We have not even been able to pay our salaries as I speak to you now.”

NHIS owes facility Nii Otu intimated that the NHIS currently owed them about GH¢640, 000 (since May last year). “The last time we were paid claims was in May 2013, and even with that, we were only offered 25 per cent of the total amount of GH¢63,000 we were supposed to have received.”

He said since they submitted their claims in November last year, it had not been honoured.

Situation is serious Nii Otu described the situation as serious, and added that if measures were not taken to arrest the problem, it could be a major setback to the health of the people.

“The people are so deprived that they will not be able to pay for the health services we provide here. As much as we help them as a church organisation, we also need the necessary resources to operate successfully,” the administrator stated.

The King’s Village Project, as it is called, was established by Rev. Ben Owusu-Sekyere and his wife, Rev. Marion Owusu-Sekyere, in 2003, with support from the Christian Centre of the Assemblies of God Church based in Nottingham in the UK as a charity organisation.